How I started Tiffany Lamp Collection (one of my Drop Shipping stores)

I normally don't share my stores, and in this post I explain why, as well as give you everything you need to know for you to get started with your own. For those who have been asking, what the heck a drop shipping store looks like. What do I sell, and why I never share the website. Is it something weird? Well this post explains it all!

The reason why I don't publicly share my stores is because of copycats, stalkers, idea stealing, as well as messing up conversion rates, analytics and wasted ad money. But since I know how important it is for some people to see what a store actually looks like before they commit their own time, money and energy, I've decided to share this store with you.

*Note, I no longer have any ownership in TLC but all of the information in this post still holds true and is a great case study as this store made over $30,000 in profits before moving to a different website address and store name with the new owner.

Also, please don't ask me for my other store URLs as they are private for the reasons below in this post, including the store I sold for $60,000 as it would be unfair to the new owner for the same reasons. Keep reading for an inside peek on my sale's dashboard, how dropshipping works, and why my self and other dropshippers don't usually publicly talk about our niches our share our store websites.

Why So Secret?

The first question is usually why the heck I keep my stores a secret in the first place. It would make sense to tell as many people about it as possible just in case someone knew of someone who wanted to buy one of those products, it's almost like free word of mouth advertising. Well if I sold something like coffee I would, as everyone I meet would be a potential customer. But since I only own niche product stores, the chances of you needing a Tiffany Style Lamp is almost zero.

The potential downsides are having shady people try to steal my intellectual property, copy my niches, which usually fail because they haven't put in the work and people with personalities like that normally don't succeed anyway.
But by them doing so it still throws a wrench in the system as they always try to slash prices and undercut the market as they always have the scarcity mentality and try to do anything to make a sale. This forces everyone else to lower their prices even if and when the copy cat gives up and goes out of business.

The other reason why it's a pain in the butt is because it makes it hard to optimize for sales and conversion rates when you're not sure which customers are coming to your store to actually buy something and which are coming just to take a look around your site with no intention to buy.

Edit: I no longer own TLC but have I've recorded a video walkthrough of my store here before it and changed owners.

Hey everyone =)

Conversion Rates:

To run a successful online business, I need to keep track of what visitors are coming from where and what percentage of them add a product to their shopping cart and how many people actually buy something. I've paused all of my paid ads temporarily so the majority of the visitors that came today are from me mentioning the store on Travel Like a Boss Podcast.

Notice the 41 visitors and 0.0% conversion rate.

Normally those 41 visitors should have lead to one sale, and if it didn't, I'd spend money on ads to retarget them. Have one of my staff email them to ask why they didn't purchase, etc. The industry average for an eCommerce store is a 1% conversion rate. Which means, 1 out of 100 visitors to a website will actually take out their credit card and order something.

My goal is to double that and get a 2% conversion rate using all of the tactics I've learned that I talk about in Optimize Like a Boss.

Here is a screenshot of one of my other stores that has ads turned on and is doing well. For this store I had a very happy day and with 103 visitors and a 4.8% conversion rate.

What do I sell?

It's nothing weird I promise, I just pick expensive, niche products that are hard to find in stores. For this store I chose Tiffany Style Lamps because one of my friends was shopping for his mom's birthday last year and knew she liked these things. We couldn't just walk into Target or Best Buy and find them as they are a specialty item so I figured, hey this might be a good niche!

Turns out, it actually wasn't a great niche as the store does during the holidays but not very well the rest of the year. Now a days, I only focus on stores selling products I've personally bought and used myself so I have a clearer understanding of the market.

Want to Know More?

I no longer own the store or website, but here is a screen share of me walking through what the website used to look like along with an in depth explanation of how it all works. Watch this video and it'll explain it all in detail. Leave a comment below if you want to know more or see you inside the private member forums of Anton's course.

Video Tour and Explanation of the Store:

How I started the Store:

TLC was one of the first stores I started and with the help of my friend Chris, we got this store up and running within 4 weeks. We were super excited to get approved to sell both Cal Lighting as well as Meyda lamps as those are two of the biggest manufacturers in the niche.

I used the same techniques I learned from Anton's Drop Shipping Training Course to start Tiffany Lamp Collection. We used in the information in the course to pick a niche, do competitor research, create a master list of potential drop ship suppliers suppliers, and used the scripts in the course to call suppliers and get approved.

If it wasn't for Anton's course, I never would have known how to call up big name suppliers and convince them to approve me as an authorized dealer. I honestly and earnestly 100% recommend signing up for Anton's Dropshipping Course if you are serious about starting an online store and want to make it a success. Sure you can just try to use free information or attempt to backwards analyze this store, but there is so much behind the scenes that you'll never figure out on your own. So take this case study as proof that Anton's system works, and just join the course and do it properly if you are serious about building a successful dropshipping store yourself.

Once we got our authorized dealer accounts we started uploading the products to Shopify, played with the templates to give the store a nice look and feel, and created the About Us, Contact Us, and Price Guarantee Pages.

Making our First Sale:

Using marketing tools like Google Ads, we started getting potential customers to our store. Our first customer was a guy named Jed from Connecticut who bought a lovely 13" Stained Glass window made by Medya.

7 Step Order and Fulfillment Process:

The way a drop shipping store works is pretty genius and once you see how it all works, it's actually awesome for both the customer, manufacture and the store owner.

The manufacturer doesn't have to spend time finding customers as that's our job, and the customer saves money by having the item shipped to them factory direct instead of having it first sit on the shelves at Home Depot and paying for their markup.

Here's how Jed's order came through:

Step 1: The customer finds TiffanyLampCollection.com through either one of our paid ads, or in this case, through a simple google search.

Step 2: After browsing around the website for a few minutes, he purchases the item for $200.

Step 3: Shopify then deposits that $200 into our bank account, which usually takes 3-5 days to clear.

Step 4: I receive a new order notification and simply forward it to our supplier, in this case, Meyda.

Step 5: Meyda ships the customer the item he ordered and charges me the whole sale price for the product, which is 32% off of retail.

Step 6: I pay Meyda, using my credit card with the money already in my bank from my customer, keep the difference as profit and start racking up reward miles that let me travel for free.

A few days later Michael T from Houston Texas bought a Medya Table Lamp

Get Started Today:

Take a look inside one of my six figure drop shipping stores

www.AntonMethod.com

Edit:

I no longer have ownership in TiffanyLampCollection.com but all of the info in this post still holds true and is a great case study for anyone wanting to start their own dropshipping store.

This store over the years has made over $10,000 in profit and is a great example of the process of starting your own store. I no longer have ownership or control of the website, url or store but still run my own personal stores that I don't make public for the reasons listed above. By the way, if you're still a skeptic here is a post I wrote just for you.

Like This Post? Share It!

Post a Comment

Hey Johnny, This is Jon, that "Other Asian American From Hawaii". Thanks for sharing one of your stores niche. Niche selection for me is pretty much the hardest thing in starting up a store. My mind is closed shut when thinking of niches and I don't know where to start thinking when trying to niche down. By you showing an idea of a niche shows a great example how one can start to niche down in their thinking. I know I mentioned I was going to order OLAB like 2 weeks ago but money got tied up. I will be ordering OLAB sometime late next week. Thanks for all your help!

Hi Johnny, I'm still not a DropShipping guy, but I'm thinking on that, making researches and learning all I can.

One of my biggest doubts was actually, the niche selection, because I've read a lot about setting up a store, but no one was really naming at least one of the stores that they own... until you wrote this :)

Now is for me like "Ok, so this thing is real". Thanks very much for your texts. I'm going to start my own store soon :D I'm really excited.

Hey Luis, I'm glad this post made the niche selection process less mystifying. Now that I've met a lot of people with drop shipping stores and had them show me their sites, I can say, trust me, no niche is really that weird, it's all pretty basic, boring stuff that is simply hard to find in stores locally.

The math isn't adding up for me, unless I'm misunderstanding something. Using the example above, a $200 lamp would yield a $64 gross profit based on the 32% margin rate. At a 2% conversion rate, it would take 50 ad clicks to get you one buyer. Currently, the google adword rate for "tiffany lamps" is $2.21. So 50 clicks at $2.21 each is $110.50. This would be a loss of $46.50 on the $200 lamp. Is google adwords just extremely overpriced?

Hey Jacob, your math is correct which is why in Anton's course he directs us not to use adwords. Bidding for the broad keyword phrase "tiffany lamps" would be the same as bidding for "leather couch" which would never be profitable.

Dear Jonny, I am really impressed by everything you do. You inspired me to do something on my own. But I have a question for you. I am from India and wanted to know if the process of setting up a dropshipping and this whole process will work for me as an Indian Citizen. Thanks

Hey Rashmi, I'm sure ecommerce is one day going to be huge in India and those who started early will be extremely wealthly because of it. However, since it is so new there still, I personally wouldn't want to take on that challenge and am not sure the hurdles.

You can start a U.S. company and sell to the American market which many have done, but it's also extra steps required. Think of it as 5 steps easier than becoming a U.S. Citizen, but still work.

Hey Oddball - Yup Chris is my partner on that site. We started it together as a Shopify store, but he for personal reasons (which he regrets) migrated it to Wordpress. I have nothing to do with the site anymore and he runs it completely on his own now.

Hey Nick - it's just more hassle than it's worth for the custom features he wanted and to save the $29 a month fee wasn't worth as Shopify really makes eCommerce sites super easy which is why Anton recommends it in his course and it's what I use for my personal sites.

Hi, Johnny,Thanks for sharing all this nice info with the rest of us ;-)My one question is, how does drop shipping goes about returns of defective items, or delivery issues, shipping damaged items, and all that stuff?Thanks again,Sara.

Hey Sara, happy to share! Returns depends on your supplier, which is why as per Anton's suggestions in his course, I only work with suppliers in the U.S. who accept returns directly back to them. When people dont' know what they are doing they end up having tons of headaches with broken or returned items.

Please take a second to log in before you comment. I've turned off the anonymous commenting option. I'm open and respectful with you, please be the same back. Stay positive, trolls and spam comments will be automatically deleted.

Are you an Insider yet?

Search this Blog

Keep in touch

Recommendations

Any product or service I recommend on this blog I personally use and would recommend to both friends and family. All links on this site are affiliate links so please use them in the resources page or anywhere on the blog if you want to give me credit for referring you.

If you want to learn more about how to start your own blog and make money as an affiliate by earnestly recommending products, check out my course Income Boss.